Kazuya Kobayashi, a legend in the Japanese business world and chairman of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical, once wrote a book called "Big Fish in the Small Pond". He believes that not every enterprise can become an industry leader, and some smart companies will do vertical and deep in the market segment and become a big fish in a small pond.
Since the collective entry of foreign giants in the 80s of the last century, opening the prelude to China's beauty industry, the media environment and consumption trends have changed several times, so that the Chinese beauty market has encountered a drastic **.
What was once a vast ocean has disintegrated into countless small ponds, and each subdivision has grown its own leader.
Born in 2019, the skin future is the "small pond and big fish" in the track of effective whitening.
In the future, in the whitening market with dense foreign brands, the skin will plant the flag and occupy the high ground. In 2023, it will achieve a breakthrough in revenue of 1 billion yuan, becoming the fastest growing brand in the brand matrix of Uniasia Group.
But the big fish in the small pond is not the end, as a sample of innovation under the Uniasia Group, the skin will shoulder a more difficult mission in the future. Hu Genhua, Marketing President of Uniasia Group and Founder of Skin Future, said: "Setting the flag with science and technology and reversing the perception of Chinese brands is only the first step in the future of skin.
The mission of the new generation of Chinese brands has begun to emerge in the future of skin.
Is there a new solution to the whitening revolution of the Chinese people?
In China, the aesthetic concept of white as beauty has a long history. Since ancient times, literati and writers have used "dense snow unknown skin white" to metaphor women's ** fair-skinned Shengxue, and the earliest records of whitening methods can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
Beauty Practice released statistics in 2022 that more than 80% of female consumers between the ages of 20 and 50 have whitening needs, and the applicability of whitening products to skin types is also showing a trend of segmentation.
The year 2019, when the future of skin was born, was at a time when the concept of effective skincare was on the rise.
At that time, there was still a lack of scientific, efficient, accurate and safe domestic whitening products on the market.
What is scientific, efficient, accurate and safe? Hu Genhua explained, "Although there were a hundred whitening products on the market at that time, most of the solutions were relatively simple, and there was no clear targeted plan for different skin color problems. ”
For example, there is also a need for whitening, but some consumers want to have an even skin tone, some want to reduce dullness and yellowness, and some want to reduce blemishes and blemishes. Because of the difference in skin base, Chinese people have more sensitive skin, and blindly using ingredients to pile up fierce materials will easily overturn and even lead to the appearance of sensitive skin.
Skin Future is one of the first brands in China to "take the lead in researching whitening needs as a science". Hu Genhua believes that finding the cause from a scientific perspective and prescribing the right medicine is a solution that is more suitable for the whitening needs of Chinese people.
Following this line of thinking, he named the brand Skin Future: with an infinite desire to explore, constantly break the self-perception, and constantly evolve, with an infinite future.
After a lot of scientific and rigorous screening work, among the many whitening ingredients, the skin future locks in the whitening ingredient 377.
Compared with niacinamide, arbutin, and vitamin C, which are popular fried chicken in the whitening ingredient industry, 377** is a high-efficiency, scientific, accurate and safe whitening ingredient in European pine pine tower extract. This is also the confidence for the skin to continue to develop 377 series products in the future.
The idea of whitening is mainly a "defense" and an "attack", the former prevents the production of melanin, and the latter attacks the formed melanin, so that it does not stay on the skin.
The first 377 whitening and brightening serum launched by Skin Future realizes the closed loop of these two ideas, and stacks buffs for whitening: by adding 377 ingredients and niacinamide, the root inhibits the activity of tyrosinase, reduces melanin production, and reduces the transfer of melanin to the epidermis to achieve a double whitening effect.
After the launch of 377 Whitening and Brightening Serum, it not only dominated the list of hot and popular models on major online platforms, but also drove the brand voice of the skin future, and the subsequent products such as the skin future 377 cream launched by the brand also reproduced the road to success and became the brand's second core product.
In 2023, the future of skin will continue to grow at a high rate, and the new product "Skin Future 377 Whitening Cabin" will achieve a new explosion, with sales exceeding 60,000 pieces in 7 days.
Inward R&D, and outward breakthrough.
Now the skin future has completed the leapfrog development of the brand from 0 to 1 to 10, but Hu Genhua knows that this is not an accidental butterfly flapping its wings on the tuyere, but a fully prepared to wait for the wind to come, borrow the wind and ride the wind.
On January 1, 2021, the new Regulations on the Supervision and Administration of Cosmetics came into effect, which not only emphasized the certification specifications for whitening skin care products, but also established a registration and review mechanism for new raw materials for whitening functions. Combined with the "Specifications for the Evaluation of Cosmetic Efficacy Claims" implemented from January 1, 2022, the whitening track has ushered in a comprehensive tightening from production and research to efficacy promotion.
The skin future, which holds the 377 whitening certificate, has also become a bright dark horse in the whitening track.
Behind the ticket to the future world are countless solid scientific research achievements. "We have made a lot of preparations in basic research reserves, functional ingredient screening, technology and formula reserves, and the formation and deep digging of the R&D team, before we decisively entered the whitening track in the end. ”
As the second generation of the company's first-generation people and a young post-90s brand entrepreneur, the skin will always be surrounded by many flowers and applause in the future growth process, but Hu Genhua has never dared to relax.
His signature to himself was "Don't be careless, don't be proud, stay humble." He believes that although Skin Future has become a leader in 377 research in China, there are still many challenges for Chinese brands to solve in the research and development process.
The first problem he tried to solve was how to localize the excellent international cutting-edge technology and scientific research results based on the genes of our land.
In order to make a localized whitening solution that can truly solve the skin color problems of Chinese consumers, it is first necessary to consolidate the research on local needs.
In 2023, Skin Future will cooperate with the IIVS Institute of In Vitro Science in the United States to establish the International Joint Research Laboratory for Color Pigmentation, which is the unique mechanism difference of Chinese whitening. And once again joined hands with Symrise to start the strategic technical cooperation of CMF377, and continuously promote the localization development of ingredient research and development.
Secondly, through the implementation of basic research on whitening actives, the basis of its own scientific research barriers is formed, and then the right to speak more suitable for the whitening ingredient system of Chinese people is mastered.
At present, the skin future whitening laboratory has established a comprehensive in vitro efficacy verification platform and built its own whitening efficacy database.
On the basis of the testing platform and database, the brand is able to complete the screening and verification of more synergistic combinations of ingredients, for example, at present, SkinFuture has completed the discovery of multiple exclusive synergistic combinations and the application of invention patents around the core ingredient 377.
Hu Genhua described this as "a work of digging the foundation", and any negligence and lack of rigor in the process must be overturned.
So why does the skin still insist on such stupid efforts in the future? "Because our goal is never just to endorse a product in front of us, but to see the overall situation of today's global technology at a higher level, accumulate in the process of repeated testing, and see the way forward. ”
The Plaza Premium Group behind the future of skin has accompanied the Chinese beauty industry for more than 30 years and has witnessed too many so-called "dividends of the times". Therefore, Hu Genhua knows that behind the dividends, the place where the brand stands, is actually a snowy, dense fog obstruction of the mountain pass, if blindly rushed, astray into the road, the foot may be a cliff, and only beyond the current gains and losses, can we see where the real road is.
And a truly excellent enterprise benefits not only itself, but also the development of the entire industry. Therefore, the skin future not only insists on exploring the upgrading of ingredients and products, but also affects the evolution of the industrial ecology. By holding the whitening summit forum, global industry experts are invited to jointly publish the cutting-edge scientific and technological achievements of scientific whitening; The experience of whitening product development has been accumulated into a book, and it has been collected into a scientific monograph "Approaching Precision Whitening" to promote the common progress of the industry.
At the recent annual meeting of Plaza Asia Group, Hu Genhua said that China's cosmetics industry will usher in a "leap of faith".
To complete this gorgeous and thrilling "leap", we need more brands that stand at the forefront of the industry and set their sights on the international vision. The skin has such confidence in the future.
Hu Genhua hopes that one day, Chinese brands will participate in the global skin care science order and be accepted by more eyes. "I hope we can be a determined long-distance runner, a senior scientist, and an excellent brand born in China and facing the world. ”